Porter's Hoax

Borderruffian

1st Lieutenant
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Location
Marshfield Missouri
Signal rockets pierced the darkness over Vicksburg, Mississippi, on February 25, 1863. Dozing Southern artillery crews sprang to life, yelling, "Ironclad approaching!" Supporting a skull-and-crossbones flag at her bow, the iron hulk protruded guns from all sides. Both paddle-wheel housings bore the taunting legend "Deluded People Cave In." Angered by the vessel's audacity, the Confederate batteries opened a blistering fire. "Never did the batteries of Vicksburg open with such a din," recalled Union Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. "The earth fairly trembled, and shot flew thick and fast around the devoted monitor." Incredibly, the vessel simply cruised past at her leisure with no alteration in speed, nor did she bother to return fire.

On course to Vicksburg, the Confederate ram Queen of the West spotted the behemoth and swung quickly around. Her captain, James McCloskey, recalled, "Her guns were run out and her deck was cleared for action." With her steam up, Queenretreated downriver with the ironclad seemingly in pursuit. What the panic-stricken McCloskey failed to realize was that the giant Union ironclad was a giant hoax sent to prevent the salvage of a real Union ironclad, USS Indianola.

Indianola was part of a new, supposedly faster class of river ironclads constructed to bolster the sluggish river "tinclads" currently in use. Named for the city in Iowa, she possessed the shallow draft of a conventional riverboat, but with casemates of 3-inch armor plating in the bow and stern. For wide-angle firing, two powerful 11-inch Dahlgren cannons were placed on pivots in the front casemate. Two 9-inch guns were mounted in the rear. Two side paddle wheels, enclosed in iron housings, and two screw propellers beneath the stern propelled Indianola. Each paddle wheel had its own engine, enabling the vessel to turn sharply in narrow channels. The crew's quarters were virtually nonexistent, since the engines took up most of the interior space. Despite that, she could only manage a paltry 6 knots, or slower if going against the current. Anticipation, however, was great for Indianola -- so great that no journalists were allowed on board to reveal her secrets.


http://www.civilwarsignals.org/pages/spy/pages/ironcladhoax.html
 
Admiral Porter's hoax as portrayed in Harper's Weekly.
admiral_porters_second_dummy_frightening_the_rebels.jpg
 
Porter was actually connected with three different dummy ironclads during the war... two at Vicksburg and one in the Cape Fear River. The first one, roughly resembling the Indianola and depicted (with questionable accuracy) in Harper's is sometimes known nowadays as the "Black Terror," but this appears to be a postwar appellation; Porter at the time called it the "USS Wooden Dummy." Another one, a few weeks later, was built to resemble the Lafayette, and was referred to as the "Quaker Lafayette." The one in the Cape Fear, "Old Bogey," was used in the battle for Fort Anderson as Union forces pushed up toward Wilmington following the fall of Fort Fisher, and was built to look like a Passaic-class monitor, being used alongside the real Passaic-class monitor USS Montauk.

In all three cases, the pattern was much the same: show the Confederates the genuine article, then expose the dummy. In the case of the two at Vicksburg, the fact that they were set adrift down the river at night rather increased the verisimilitude and caused a lot of unnecessarily-burned powder on the part of the Vicksburg batteries (which was the entire point of the exercise, with a chance of getting the Confederates to maybe burst one of their guns in the process). (Despite "Lying Dave's" claims, the destruction of the captured/sunk Indianola was an unexpected but fortunate side effect.) In the case of Fort Anderson, the defenders were aware that one of the two monitors was a dummy, but it wasn't always immediately apparent which one was... again, intended to make them waste some ammo.
 
Great information Mark. How quaint that they actually gave the dummies names. Probably launched them with full ceremonial too!
A question however.
Is "Lying Dave", a name you have given to Porter ? Or was he known as this during his lifetime ?
 
I think he was known as "Black Dave." But consider this from Porter's superior, Navy Secretary Welles (from his Diary, as edited by Howard K. Beale; volume I, p. 88): "William [D. Porter, David's older brother] had, not without reason, the reputation of being very untruthful,-- a failing of the Porters, for David was not always reliable on unimportant matters, but amplified and colored transactions, where he was personally interested especially . . . I did not always consider David to be depended upon if he had an end to attain, and he had no hesitation in trampling down a brother officer if it would benefit himself." This from a man who supported Porter against critics, even Lincoln. (Ironically, Porter believed Welles was his adversary and Lincoln his advocate, when the reverse was actually the case.)

Of Porter's operations before Vicksburg (volume I, p. 249): "He [Porter] is fertile in experiments, some of which are costly without adequate results. His dispatches are full of verbosity of promises, and the mail which brings them also brings ludicrous letters and caricatures to Heap, a clerk who is his brother-in-law, filled with laughable and burlesque accounts of amusing and ridiculous proceedings. These may be excusable as a means of amusement to keep up his spirits and those of his men, but I should be glad to witness, or hear of something more substantial and of energies employed in what is really useful."

But I really arrive at a nickname of "Lying Dave" from a broad familiarity with his writing, which is literate, boisterous, enjoyable to read, and of highly variable reliability. He's one of my favorites in the same sense as Ben Butler... the scoundrels are always interesting. :thumbsup:
 
But I really arrive at a nickname of "Lying Dave" from a broad familiarity with his writing, which is literate, boisterous, enjoyable to read, and of highly variable reliability. He's one of my favorites in the same sense as Ben Butler... the scoundrels are always interesting. :thumbsup:

It's interesting that you link Porter and Ben Butler, particularly since the latter was the author of a pamphlet entitled:
Statement of facts in relation to Admiral D.D. Porter's claim not to have run away from forts St. Philip and Jackson, in April 1862, by which his cowardice and falsehood are fully shown from official documents and Porter's own self contradictions (http://archive.org/details/statementoffacts00butl)
I wonder just what he was trying to say?:smoke:

Note: this pamphlet also says something about ol' Ben -- it was written in 1889, incited by some random remarks of Porter, in which he merely slighted some statements of Butler. Butler's reaction was ferocious -- as it always was. An excellent lawyer, Ben Butler knew how to marshal evidence in defense or attack. He also compulsively saved just about every scrap of paper that came into his hands (the Butler Papers in the National Archives is a HUGE collection). That's how every inquiry, every Commission, Congressional or otherwise, that his many political enemies set to look into his actions, concluded that he was innocent of wrongdoing: he overwhelmed them with documentary proof!

Hilaritas!

jno
 
Yup. I've noted elsewhere that I thought it quite funny how Butler and Porter seemed to get repeatedly thrust into each other's company. (I guess it was only twice, but from the amount of writing each did about the other, it seems like more than that!)

The two men had far more in common than either one would ever admit-- they were both quite intelligent, very creative and favorably-disposed towards experiment and innovation, solid Union men yet with considerable ties to the South in general and Jefferson Davis in particular (Porter was reportedly offered a commission by Davis, and Butler voted for Davis for U.S. President in a number of test votes in one of the 1860 Democratic conventions), and both were accomplished raconteurs and interesting writers. They were also both overly ambitious, rather lacking in principle, quite egotistical, and could be extremely callous and heartless to their enemies-- on both the Union and Confederate sides.

(The point where this comparison breaks down is that Porter had considerable military experience and ability, and Butler emphatically did not, excepting in the area of administration.)
 
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